#213 - Flying Wheels Goes Electric w Craig Anthony

You are listening to the Independent Dealer Podcast with hosts Luke Godwin and Jeff Watson.

Hello and welcome to this episode of the Independent Dealer Podcast, brought to you by Buckeye Dealership Consulting. This week we have caught up with an old friend of the podcast, Mr. Craig Anthony from Flying Wheels.

Hey, everyone.

So if you guys remember episode 62, which was a long time ago, man, time has flown because we were talking about.

Yeah, Jeff had a full head of hair.

I.

We both had beards that I was sitting in this exact seat that I was three years ago. It went by fast.

Oh, man, that's crazy. It's been a heck of a. Heck of a two and a half years. Had it.

Yeah, right?

It has. I definitely feel like our YouTube channels have been on slightly different trajectories, though. I don't know how we didn't hitch our wagon more to yours.

Well, he's just better looking. He's better looking. People want to see his face. They would. They don't mind hearing our voice, but looking at us is hard, Jeff.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So if you haven't listened to episode 62 or seen it on our YouTube channel, go back, check it out. To get kind of the basis for this conversation with Craig. We, we. We cornered him. We. He's gracious enough to give us some of his time and get caught up with what he's had going on in his life. As you guys know, he's a dealer, but Craig, I mean, it's almost like the YouTube channel and, and your, your videos and your content that you're creating there is. It's starting to challenge your timeframe. Where are you at these days? I mean, how much time can you give your dealership and still give your YouTube channel?

Time management is absolutely my biggest problem. I'm always trying to juggle multiple things. Fortunately, the dealership and the YouTube channel kind of coincide together. So everything we're doing already I document, which is how the whole channel started. Anyway. Hey, this is kind of interesting. Let me put this out. And then when people did find it interesting, I realized they were into it. I started replicating it and listening to the viewers, seeing what they wanted to see. And it's what you do in your shop as well as me. And people just find that entertaining or interesting at least, because they don't really get to see the behind the scenes. And, you know, us used car dealers in general, or we are generalized to be that used car dealer category that kind of has some slang to it. So I love showing the opposite side of it. I Like seeing the headaches and the grief we go through, the problems we, we overcome. I like to show the back end that people can really see and then oftentimes relate to us too.

That's, that's super interesting because we have such a negative connotation, I guess, or negative view by so many consumers. And, and what you're doing is probably humanizing us a little bit and probably more of us could do that. And it's just, it's very interesting. So along that line, Craig, are you filming all day long? You have a crew that, that runs behind you. I mean, how does that work?

It's so much work now. It didn't, it wasn't this way when I started out. It is just so much fun.

We did that. Yeah.

So when I started, it was just, hey, this is interesting. I'm restoring a wheel. Let me show you how I get rid of progression. That's it. Video over. Now, listening to what people want, I show more of it. So what used to be maybe an eight minute video is now a 20 minute video. Because they want to see the entire recon process of an 08 Honda Accord, for example, or whatever I'm doing in the moment. A Jeep Wrangler lift kit with wheels. And what are we going to sell it for? So that magic number, they always want to see that magic number at the end. And the videos have gone from 6, 7, 8 minutes to 20 minutes long now. And before any of my guys do anything, they know they have to grab me. Hey, Craig, this is probably a good part to put in your video. So now I have to get up out of my office, grab my camera, video whatever they're doing. And if they do something before I'm able to video it, they know I sometimes get disappointed. Oh man, that would have just looked so good on video. So even spray, even paint coming out of a gun looks good in slow motion. So they'll grab me for just about everything. Which back to your question about time management. It's really difficult to accomplish a lot of things at once.

That's something that I think every entrepreneur has to deal with, Craig, is.

How.

Do we juggle family? How do we juggle our business? Our side hustles. And then when the side hustle in the business kind of come together, I'm sure it creates another whole, whole aspect. And if you're like me, I know nothing about technology, so I wouldn't even know how to, how to begin doing any of this, any of this stuff. Not, not to mention my bad time management skills.

Right.

I learned how to edit videos at night watching tv. It was just something I had never done before and then had to figure it out on my phone. Getting new programs and then incorporating music to it that wasn't copywritten so we can monetize it. There was just so many things and everything happens one step after the next, just the same as our dealerships. You know, it was. It was. I was independent and I started by myself and then it just kind of snowballed one step after the next. I had to grow so slow, calculated growth happened with the dealership and the same happened organically with the YouTube channel.

That's interesting to me. What are the differences between when we talked to you last and now? You'd mentioned a little bit that you've added some people to the production crew. Right. It's not, it's not necessarily just you shooting a video and editing at night. You've had to take that to the next level too.

All of it. Yeah. So originally I was. I didn't have that. Eventually it was a point where I just didn't have time anymore. I was up till midnight editing videos. The only time I can go to the gym and get my alone time to myself is in the morning. So I'm up at 4:45, so there's not much time to sleep and it affects my mental health. So anyway, what I was doing was I'd work all day, video anything that I found interesting, come home, have dinner with my family, go to the sports, then we do the household chores, my wife and I. And then I would edit videos. Well, eventually it just got to be too much for me and I had to hire editors. So I have an editor that knows he's exactly on the same page as me. He knows what every video is ahead of time. I send him basically a. A large formatted video of all the clips together and he cleans it up, does all the transitions, adds the music, and he sends me a final cut for me to do my final edit and then I can just upload it. He'll do a thumbnail for me now too. So it's just. It's just made it so much easier for me. And he's also my videographer, so if there are videos that I'm not vlogging with, holding my camera up, he'll be there for the really, really well produced videos as well.

Is that so the higher end production with, with video, with your videographer is that. Do you have a time frame? Do I do that once a week or do I do it once a month Is that or just every video.

And every scenario is different. So a lot of it, like I said, it's behind the scenes of the car dealership. So I don't need a guy with a camera just standing around all day. So a lot of times I'll video. But for example, we went out to. I took my father out to Nevada two weeks ago to the Ron Fellows Performance Driving School for the Corvettes. So they taught us how to race Corvettes on track. So I brought my videographer with us and he just, he made it artistic. I mean, it looks like a television show. Ironically, people are more interested in what I have to say close up to my face than what I think is a really, really cool, interesting video. But all they want to hear is, hey, what'd you pay for that? And what'd you sell it for? Or what can you teach me about, you know, finance or something?

Well, what, you know, when you look at that, I mean, did you get in? Let me back up. Does YouTube help you sell cars?

Absolutely.

Oh, my goodness.

My business is. My business has grown astronomically from YouTube. It's built a rapport with people where they feel a connection to me and the dealership. And a perfect example was yesterday, someone drove an hour and a half to not, not trade anything in to sell me their 2013 Volkswagen facade specifically because they wanted to come say hello to us. And they were disappointed that my manager, it was his birthday yesterday, took the day off. They were disappointed he wasn't there. So that's a perfect example. But I have people that call me and email me from all over the country and I'll integrate my inventory into every video intentionally, so they might. I'm going to use the Honda Civic, for example, because that's the most recent video coming out this week. But I'll do a Honda Civic video recon process or something. And during the video I'll scan my lot and people will see, oh, look at that. 16 Dodge Drum. I'm interested in that. And I'll get an email the next day or that night after the video airs, or I'll just speak about the upcoming projects. And I had a Toyota Tundra that was sold before, before it was even ready. They saw the purchase process and then said, I want that. Let me know when it's done. So we've built a brand and we've built loyalty as well, where people reach out to us and say, hey, I want that car I saw on your lot. And just. Just to say, I don't spend a Dime in Google advertising. Nothing in YouTube advertising.

I was about to say that, yeah, they're paying you.

I just get who's paying me. But I looked at my analytics on my, on my Flying wheels business page on Google last month. We have 38,000 organic clicks to our website for literally $0, which is just insane. I didn't even realize the number was that high.

I wanted to ask the opposite of that. Craig, sometimes I watch your videos and you're like, yeah, I bought this, you know, piece of junk, rust covered this, that or the other. This thing's had a dead animal in the back of it. And you see these cars and I'm like, when people see how the soup is made, do they really still want to eat the soup? You know, like, wait a minute, just bought that tundra from you? And then I went back and saw that this thing was at the bottom of a lake for six months. I didn't know that. You know, like, is there any negative side how the sausage is made?

It's a double edged sword because for exactly what you said. But I had done a Trailblazer SS a year ago and it was, it's probably one of the worst cars I've ever purchased, condition wise. When I, when I originally purchased it, I made two or three videos of the recon and restoration process and somebody bought it out of Tennessee. So talk about transparency. We as dealers sometimes pride ourselves on being transparent. There's nothing more transparent than seeing where that car came from originally and you knowing what it is now. And a lot of times, like I said, that loyalty is, they have a story now. Like, I made that guy part of a video and he was so excited about it.

That's so neat that you can do that, that you can get customers that seen how the sausage is made. Do you ever. And I haven't, I'm sorry, I haven't been up to date on when you do those type of videos. Did you tell the public what you pay for them and then what you sell them for? So can they see I can't do a video?

That's what they care so much about. When this first started, I had bought two Escalades. Years and years ago I bought two Escalades and I never said how much I paid for them. And people were just so mad at me. And if you read the comments on that original video, they were mad I wasted their time and they just want to know the beginning and the end of the story. So it is transparent, which is neat. But what on the negative side, let's say somebody that doesn't watch my channel buys, I don't know, $8,000 car, and then they see that video that I might have paid 2,400. Forget about all the time, all the money, the investment, the overhead, all those things. If, if that buyer sees the video later on, oh, my God, that guy made $6,000 off me. No, I didn't. But in their mind, that's what they see and that now they want something. Hey, you know, my battery's a little low. I wonder if you could replace it for me. I know you only paid 2,000 for that car, so that's when it gets a little tough.

Well, that's, that's what I was figuring would happen because I know, dang goodwill. If I, if I posted every time what I paid for a car and somebody came back and saw it, they'd be the same issue. Do you ever get anybody trying to negotiate harder because they know what you paid for a car?

Oh, all the time. Yeah. I get, I get. So I bought a Z06 and we did quite a bit of work to it a month or so ago, and I showed what I paid for it. I think I paid $23,000 for it. I launched the video, and that night I probably got five emails that said, I'll give you 23 for it today. But that I don't think people realize that my business isn't to just buy and give you a car for my price. So I get that a lot as well. Or, you know, they'll say, I'll give you 235 today, cash. So there is that too. And you just have to weed through it. And a perfect to just double back to what you had mentioned. We have grown so much that there's a couple walls people have to break through to get to me. So it used to be you could call me on my cell phone and speak to me directly about a car or a problem or anything, but I just don't have the time for it anymore. So there are a couple people you have to get through to get to me to get to that decision maker I used to call it. So that has saved me a lot of grief.

Yeah, that's the beauty of the scaling part. And let's talk about that before we transition to some more of your recent content. But I think that's what you, what you've explained is such a good story for dealers to know that you had a marketing and a side hustle or whatever you want to call it. Kind of your decision to get into YouTube and start posting videos. And you grew it to the point where it was consuming your entire life. Right. You were filming, you were editing, you were taking time away from the family. But then it seems like you kind of got to a breakthrough point where you said, okay, my side hassle or this project I have has scaled so much. Then now I can hire an editor and a videographer and maybe your next step is to hire a director or a content coordinator or something. But I think what we need to remember is there are times when you're going on all cylinders and you're burning the candle at both ends until you get to that breakthrough point.

I'm still there. It's all the time.

All of us dealers have that though, right? We're the ones signing the contracts and buying the cars and selling them and maybe even fixing them for a minute. And then all of a sudden, all right, I'm going to take that step to hire somebody. The economics are now there where I can have a mechanic, or the economics are now there where I can have a full time salesman and I don't have to meet with the customers anymore. And. And so we need to be aware of when that time is to take that step.

Well, let me ask you guys a question, and I'm going to flip it on you a little bit. And I kind of feel like this is relatable to a lot of us dealers. I feel I notice myself when I get to a point where I have some freedom or time. I'm looking for the next thing. Oh, what else is there? What else can I do? Is that. Do you guys do that as well?

Man, I tell you, that is the one thing that has plagued me for a long time. And I've been in the car business my whole life. And so I get bored at times. And when I get bored, I try to find the next thing to do. Whether that is like I see you're doing now, you know, starting a rental property business, which I've done and have since tried to shut it down, or starting a rental car company, which I've done and shut down, or you name it. I think that's the nature of us entrepreneurs that we, we feel like if we know how to do something very well, what we should do then is try to figure out how to do something else very well. Yeah, and a lot of times it goes the opposite direction.

Right. We're idea men, we're entrepreneurs. So I think all of us are constantly looking for, okay, what can I fill my idle hands with? I have an Idea, let me see if I can do it. And I keep doing that. So even though I've now found somebody to help me out and take the weight off my shoulders for YouTube and the dealership, I have more going on now.

So it's now searching the MLS or something.

So something's always there. So if I had focused 100% on the dealership, I'd be burned out. If I focused 100% on YouTube, I'd be burned out. But I keep diversifying and kind of splitting things, splitting the atom and relying on a trustworthy team to help me along the way.

Yeah. And I think that's the key. Like you said, you have these interests. You can go down that road from incubation to development and then passing it off to a competent manager. Right. That's what entrepreneurs do, is, you know, now good ones.

Good ones, yeah.

You can be the owner of your dealership and not the operator. You can be the face and the personnel of your YouTube channel, but not necessarily the technician and the editor behind the scenes or the marketer, you know, and, and I think, yeah, dealers in theory. And I can't speak for every dealers because I think there's a lot of one and two man operations that are probably very, very happy, you know, being at the car lot every day, every Saturday and doing everything A to Z. But as, as we kind of develop the system and then we can pass it off to someone and free our time to, to. To get into something else. Hey, real quick, just to jump in here, talking with Craig All Things Cars and about building his dealership. That is a great time to get out and meet other dealers at the buy here, pay here United summit coming up in April.

Yep. I booked my tickets today. Head out there on April 10th and leave early in the morning. On April 13th, it's at the Bellagio. It's all Buy here, pay here, Jeff, all the time. No vendor selling you anything. We're just going to be out there discussing how to get better at our business, how to do it the right way, get registered. It's a great deal. I think it's 499 for the first person and 199 for everybody you bring. I'm bringing some folks from our dealership. We're going to get better and we're going to get. We're going to get better with all the education.

Sessions are completely different than anything else. If you go and look at the agenda, you're going to see topics where you want to attend every single session. You know, like some of these conventions where you're kind of skipping every other one or going to one or two. You'll. You'll want to be at every single one of these.

It's going to be like a big 20 group or performance group meeting. It's going to be amazing.

Yeah. Well, you had mentioned about being small originally and the YouTube channel growing, but that's how all. All of my businesses started. We had discussed in episode 62, the original time I was on, I started in my driveway, not curbstoning. I'm going to say that because I know there are a bunch of dealers listening right now. I was licensed. And even before that, the cars I was flipping previously, before my license, I would register them. You know, that was my car. I drive it for a month, two, three, four months or whatever, sell it, make a profit, move on to the next one. And the car would be better than the first one. And then I get more money, more capital to work towards a better car. And the business was the same way when I got my license. It started with a couple cars and a really small commercial garage, and it snowballed from there. So the business grew, and so did YouTube. It was the same way. So when I found that the business was large enough to take on more help, I did. And YouTube was the same way.

It's gotta be super easy for you to find employees, too. I mean, Craig, you just like, hey, come work.

They're all over the country.

Probably have 300 people that will move to be at your car lot.

You know what? I get those people from Africa almost daily. I get an email through my website almost daily for you.

Let me ask one more thing before we get off that. Because you said something that's so interesting to me. We at times have dealers when we do our How I Built this series or situations like you where we want to interview them. They don't want to go on the record for whatever reason. Personal. Do you ever worry sometimes that any of your videos might be a gotcha moment or any of your personal exposure? Someday some person or some regulatory agency or some whoever is going to be like, you weren't supposed to sell that car or you weren't supposed to be anything?

I do. Right. I am an open book on the Internet, which could definitely bite me in the butt. And it's trying to probably please people, too. What do they want to see? All right, I'll put it out there. They ask me a question and I answer it. But you're absolutely right. I'm not perfect and I'm Sure, I make mistakes. Well, I know I make mistakes because there's a million people that tell me what I'm doing at every day. But I do worry about that if I ever do something incorrectly and the right person or the wrong person figures it out or sees it and I didn't even know that I was doing it, who knows? It could, it could come back and bite me.

But that, I mean, honestly, that's the risk all of us take and.

Yeah.

And I think try to do it the right way.

That's.

That's all you can do. You can't be malicious about it.

Yeah. So interesting. So, Craig, let's transition. You recently went cross country. Some of your recent content has been about that. What was it called?

The kind of like a Cannon. Cannonball run for UVs.

It was an EV cannonball run, yeah. For a television show. First of its kind. We broke world records. It was interesting. I raced across the country from Brooklyn to LA with my mother. And the requirement for television, which was neat, we've shot a television show out of it. The only requirement was it had to be an electric vehicle and it couldn't be a Tesla because they're on a completely different format than everything else.

But you bought the next best thing at Taycan, right?

Of course I did. Wouldn't you?

Yeah, of course I would.

Yeah. I'm not going in a Chevy Volt or a bolt.

They might blow up on you, though.

So I asked the producer, I said, can it. When they called me to see if I wanted to be on the show, I said, can I just pick my car? And they were going to provide us with, I think it was a Chevy bolt or something. And I asked if I could provide my own car. And they, they said, yeah, what are you thinking? And I said, I'd love to buy a. It's a perfect excuse to get a Porsche take on. And they said, you get a take on, you're on the show automatically. So there goes now. I did. It was a two way street for me because it was now on a television show. But my other agreement, the arrangement I made with them was I'm going to vlog it. So it was, can I buy a take on. On the east coast, what is it like to drive it? And then what is it like to be on a TV show? And then can we sell it for a profit out in California, which is obviously so heavily EV out there. So that was, that was my, that was my reasons for doing it, aside from the fun. The fun and joy got to share.

With my mother, I couldn't imagine being in a car for however long that trip takes. With my mother, that would not happen.

I said a lot about your family dynamics, Craig. That is inspirational.

Well, you know what? I actually invited my father. I invited my father for the show. And when I was talking, we're mulling over ideas with the producers, and they were. I was telling my family dynamic. My mother, my father, my brother, my sister, and the Purdue. One of the producers is a female, and she said, wait, tell me about your mother. So I'm like, oh, yeah, this is her. And she's like, we want her. Well, no, I already invited my father. They're like, no, no, no, we want your mom. So I had to call my dad and I actually. I called my mom and my mom. Listen, I don't know how to tell dad. The show wants you, not dad. I don't. I don't know how to break it to him to break his heart. She's like, oh, yeah, you just told him you're on speakerphone.

Hey, Craig.

Yeah.

I'm like, oh, well, that was easy. It's over with.

Oh, my gosh. Well, talk us through. You buy the car, you blog all this, and you're not far from New York. So tell us, how many days, how many speeding tickets did you get? How did you charge this thing? Talk us through it.

Well, it's a perfect, perfect time to discuss EVs. I guess now that fuel prices. But what happened was I drove. I found the car I wanted, so I drove down in New Jersey with my diesel. I picked up the Taycan in my Duramax with a trailer. I got all the way down to New Jersey and halfway back on a tank of diesel fuel. An electric car. You go 200 miles and you're sitting for an hour charging your car. So we had to drive. My mother and I drove the take on from Boston to Brooklyn. We charged two times on the way to Brooklyn, and that is the first time I'd ever been in an electric vehicle. I'd never driven one. Oh, wow. Luckily, I bought the car a week before, so I did get to drive it a little bit, charge it from home. But there were. There was such a learning curve that I wasn't familiar with. But by the time we got to LA 12 days later, we were. We were. I would consider myself, a professional EV nerd. Along with my other running mates, we were having full nerd nerd conversations. We called them.

How did you. How many charging stops did you have to take across country? That's interesting to me.

You have, it's. You have to be a mathematician. We are. Our country is not ready for it yet. I'd hate to say it negatively and it's going to come off that way, but we are not ready to go full ev. The industry and the format is just not there yet. The infrastructure is not there yet. So there are a lot of ways to figure out how to charge your car. So I have three different apps and one was the Porsche app. One was specific for charge across America, which was the diesel gate through Volkswagen. They charge across America had to be put up, they had to build an infrastructure across the country, but they're just not everywhere and they're not even at the rest areas. So like I said, you couldn't use Teslas because the Tesla infrastructure is far superior to everything else. So we would have to plug it in our, in our GPS or plug it in our phone to find the nearest charging station and it would be. Could be 10 miles off the highway and I have to pull off and go wait in a parking lot while my car charges. And the other thing you don't think about, like, we'll pull off into a gas station pump and it's covered. There's a convenience store or whatever. These are out in the open. There's no coverage. So if it rains, you're either sitting in your car for an hour or you're getting dumped on holding an electric plug, which is. Is safe. But yeah, you know, you say it out loud, it sounds a little funny. We stopped. Oh, go ahead.

I'm just going to say there's no. I'm surprised there's not a gap somewhere. It seems like there's got to be a, some gap in middle America that.

That's exactly where it is.

2, 200 miles.

You get Kansas, you get in Kansas and you're screwed.

Right?

That's exactly what happened. So there were times where they, the producers would warn us and they'll say, because it was, it was a strategy. We had a strategically plan plan and it wasn't a race who's the fastest to la. It was the fastest to the next checkpoint. So every night we had to be somewhere else across the country and it was the fastest to get there. So we would, my mother and I would plan the mileage. And if you can't speed, if you go too fast, you're now inefficient and you're burning through your mileage and your charge. So we're going to be as efficient as possible to every charging station. The first time, the first day we overcharged, we charged too many times, so we came in last place. But now we were fully charged when we got to our checkpoint. So the next day we got to take off before everyone else while they were going to charge. Once we got out to the Midwest, it was, you don't pass a charging station. If there's a charging station, you stop and you have to calculate how long until you. And how far until the next charging station. Topping off Colorado's. You know the topography out there. You're going uphill, so you have to count. It's not just how far you're going. What's your range? 230 miles. Not when you're going uphill. You're very efficient. So we had to calculate there and find. We were going off the map to go find charging stations in certain states, in certain cities, just so we could. Small towns, I should say, just so we don't run out. Which I did a teaser. I did run out.

Well, I was going to say.

Did you?

Ohio. I ran out in Ohio and I got pulled over in Colorado. So you had to answer your questions. Both of those things happen.

That sounds interesting.

Yeah. But my mother and I got along. You know, we. We had that high anxiety and stress level where we bickered and bought. Bite It. Bite. We bit each other a little bit.

Yeah.

But we. I mean, we didn't even listen to radio. Once we got into it, we started chatting, we told stories.

Really?

Yeah, we got along really well. Yeah. My father and I probably would have talked politics the whole time. And my mother and I joked and told stories. So it worked out really well for us. Yeah. Yep, it was great. Got a little cramped, but the car was comfortable and we had a cameraman behind us the whole time in the backseat. Oh, yeah, the poor guys. We're talking about efficiency and something I didn't even mention to be most efficient. You don't turn the AC on, you don't roll the windows down, you don't turn the heat on. There were times like we didn't listen to radio a lot of the time because it would use the electricity so we'd see the charge go faster. So the poor guys in the back, they'd be sweating their butts off because we. And this with all the drivers because we wouldn't turn the AC on and roll the windows down out in Arizona.

So, you know, I'm a novice when it comes to EVs. Jeff's way more experienced. I think they're super cool. I'm A Porsche guy. So if I had to buy one, I know which way I would go. Did you know before you started this, hey, I want to own a Porsche Taycan? Did you do some more research other than that, can you. Can you give us some updates on what you. What you found interesting about EVs in general?

Yeah, I knew I wanted that take on the day it came out, as soon as I saw when I wanted one. I'm a Porsche guy as well. And to have an electric supercar I thought was pretty cool, especially we're still fairly new into the industry. I thought that was pretty neat. The other option was the Mach E, which, which has a much longer range. Obviously it would be less expensive to maintain and there are more Ford dealers in locations. So that was the other option. But there was already a Mach E on the show. There were supposed to be two of them. So the take on was an easy go ahead for me. And honestly, if it wasn't, I got the rear wheel drive. If it was the all wheel drive, I would have kept it being in the Northeast. The all wheel drive would have been nice to have, but you're talking a much larger MSRP on those two.

Yeah, you probably would have shipped it back from LA and not driven it.

Oh, I know. They actually would have shipped it for me. That was part of the deal. But I wanted to sell it when I got out there.

This part of your show?

Just for the show.

Yeah, I'm gonna. You all gotta get into.

Did you make some money?

You can't. You gotta watch. You gotta watch. I'm not giving you all the teasers.

So when is this, when is this show gonna be out and what channels are gonna be on all that?

The show aired one episode originally. They had. They had sold one episode to NBC Sports long ago. So a compiled episode was on NBC Sports in December, and I'm sure you can find it somewhere. NBC Sports has since, I think, gone out of business. So I'm not sure where you find it. I just google it. But yeah, yeah, right. So so much happened then. They weren't expecting it because it's supposed to be a docu series. It was supposed to be just a documentary on what it's like driving across the country. It turned into a reality show with drama and fights and dead cars on the side of the road and getting pulled over. So there was a lot that happened. So much so that they weren't expecting to have a series out of it. And from what I hear, speaking with the producers, they're trying to Put everything together into like an eight or a 10 episode season. And then there was even chat about charge across Europe if, if it takes off, which was really neat.

Yeah, that's super neat. Years ago we got called about doing a TV show and it's so neat. I wish, I wish it would have worked. What's funny is my, they interviewed us like this, you know, and I had to bring my dad in because that's part of the business. And after, after all that went through, they called me back and said, yeah, it's just not going to work with your dad.

Hey, it's, it's, I mean you have to be ready for television. It's a lot cameras in your face and you have to be that type of person and not everybody is, you know.

So, yeah, don't fall for it.

I always thought a reality show around a buy here pay here car lot would be so interesting. But the level of drama, because like Craig's proven, people want to see behind the scenes, they want to see how, how it goes down. But the, the privacy and the drama side of it would just be way more than it'd be worth.

Yeah. And you know, I put a lot out there and I don't, I wouldn't even dare dabble in the buy here pay here. So I commend you for it and I would absolutely watch it if you found a way to put that out there.

So Craig, but your overall take, let me go back to the EV thing. Your overall take from this. Are you as a car dealer, are you buying more EVs? Do you feel like the whole tout that we're going to have an infrastructure? Biden's going to put in 500,000 chargers within the next couple of years. And all this money that's being thrown at it, is it going to work for the consumers? Are we going to get a large scale adoption or are we still decades down the road?

I, Jeez, I'd hate to speak negatively about things and I really don't want to, but in this topic it turned out to be that way.

Hey, real quick, remember to set up your reinsurance company, guys. Now is the time to call the guys over. Buckeye, make sure you are reinsuring for all those products that you're putting on your car lot, you're filming on your YouTube channel. When they see your cars, you want to make sure that you're capturing that in your own insurance company for sure.

I mean it's still the first quarter, you still have time to get set up. And the whole year you can maximize your profit to your reinsurance company and your dealership, learn how to sell vsc, learn how to get tire and wheel or all these type things that make your dealership more gross and in the end makes you more money, builds your wealth and do it the right way.

Yeah. You know what's interesting? So it's kind of like the, you know, taking my own medicine. I don't actually have a, a VSI or a post Salience psi. I don't have a PSI product at my dealership and I spend a lot on psis. I'll be honest. Like, I'm buying stuff, I'm buying stuff through Manheim. I'm ordering a psi. Instantly. I'm winning on about one out of every other, which has something to say about the quality of cars at auctions now and always. But to do those on my own, the problem is, is even if I win on a psi, I lose because I don't have the car. And it might have been something small, but all the guy tells me is, oh, there's a leak, or oh, that shift's harder. Oh, there's this. And it's like, okay, I'm not going to gamble. I got to say no to this. But then I don't get that car. Whereas if I could still get that car and then I had money set aside in my own reinsurance company to cover the fact that maybe it was just a shift solenoid or maybe it was just even a total rebuild, that's okay because I had that money set aside self insured to get that thing fixed. And now it's on my front line and I'm selling it exactly as hard.

As cars are to get today, doing PSI with one of the big companies isn't worth it. Reinsure it. Make, make money on the car and get reimbursed for the, for whatever you had to fix.

There were so many things I didn't even discuss just, just now about the EV infrastructure. I mean, there were times that the chargers weren't working. So we would sit for 45 minutes and have to call, charge across, have to call Electrify America and have them reset the machine and then you have to wait for it to boot up. There was instances where I can say it all now that the show's been out. But the other take on it fried his, it fried his computer. And it happened. The same charging station did it to the Mach E, so they both had to go to the dealers that night. We had a polestar just short circuited and wouldn't work on the third day into the show. So we are far from, far from. I really appreciate the time and effort everyone's putting into the EV world, and we're never going to improve if they don't. But we're a long way from it. And I don't know anybody else that's ever traveled across the country from east to west or west east in anything other than a Tesla. It was a lot of work and we found a lot of problems, a lot of issues. And if there was ever anybody that could put it all out there, we experienced all of them. Even. Even running out of charge on the side of. On a turnpike in Ohio. We got charged by a generator.

Yeah.

So the generator, a truck, gas truck, pulls a generator, pulls up in front of us, and then drags a cord and plugs us in to charge us. So we're not really there yet. There aren't enough stations. And I just demoed the Harley Livewire, which is their electric motorcycle. I'm an avid motorcyclist with my family. We do bike weeks. That's not possible. The Bike week near me in New Hampshire, Laconia Motorcycle week is a hundred. It's about ninety miles away. And when we go riding with our friends, we'll ride all day. You fill up every hundred miles. You're in and out in 10 minutes. But if I have to stop my friends on gasoline motorcycles and say, hey, guys, I gotta charge for 30 minutes, they'll leave. They'll leave me. And you go somewhere like Sturgis that I was in August. You talk about a million motorcycles. There's. There's not enough charging stations for that. Or you go to a. You get into the city where everybody needs to charge their car. I can't even imagine how far away from that we are.

Yeah, we're ways years. I mean, we don't have the production. If everybody hooked their cars up at night, we would not have the energy production to make this happen. Right.

And that's only one side of it.

I'm at a power convention right now. You can see I'm in a hotel. It's the National Rural Electric Co Op. I'm on the board for my local power Co op. And it's all been talked about, the whole thing, very much talking about EVs and a lot of the rural electric companies. You know, some of the old timers kind of push against it a little bit, you know, not sure that it's the future and not sure, again, to Luke's point, do you have the power Capacity. Do you have the distribution to make these things happen? And it's, it's just funny to me. Like you said, Craig, I've dabbled in a handful of early generation EVs right at my car lot with the E Focus and an E Golf and the Kia Soul ev. The first generations of these things, they're not good. That E Golf and the E Volt swap, the E Focus, they're horrible, horrible, glitchy, bad components. Just not had a good experience. So when people say they're going to run out and buy that first F150 Lightning, I said, well, you need to be like the third or second iteration. Nobody's going off the production line.

I'm a, I'm a Ford guy. Ford's had years with this stuff. And so, I mean, when was the first Focus that came out that the electric Focus or Fusion, it's been, I Bet it's been 10 years now. So Ford's.

But, but every iteration is different though, because they're using different components, they're using different technology. And like all of a sudden you found out that the computer was fried because of a bad charger or you have some sort of a bug in a piece of software or some off the shelf component that you bought that connects this to. This is just bad. So I think it's just takes, I think it takes so long to work out those bugs.

So both, both of y', all, because you'll know way more about this than I do. Tesla, how far ahead is Tesla than every other manufacturer when it comes to EV technology?

Their infrastructure is night and day compared to, compared to everything else. They have farther range. So our producer was driving a Tesla for the show because it has farther range, quicker charging you. You basically, you plug your charger into the Tesla and it reads your car. I have to. With my Porsche. I had to scan it on my app, I had to plug it in, make sure it runs correctly, and then it charges my phone app. There was a lot of steps with a Tesla. Tesla tells you where to go. You take the cord, you plug it in, it charges to your card, you unplug it, you're done. It's that simple. And they're at rest areas. I mean, there were Tesla charging station rest areas. So they are just miles and miles ahead and put to speak positively about it. You have to realize too though, without the hiccups, they'll never know what they need to overcome. So there are going to be negatives, but we need those to advance. I have a number on a Lightning and the new Hummer, which no one knows anything about when they're coming out and when the Corvette E Ray comes out, I'll get one of those too, just to try them out. And I'm curious what the electric future has to bring. We are far from a solid infrastructure, but. Yeah, but I'm curious to see what it brings and how long it's going to take to get there.

My argument has always been great commuter car. I don't think that they're not suited for cross country. They're not suited for travel. Like you said, they're not tour bikes or tour cars where you're just driving all day. But for commuting, I can plug it in at my office, I can plug it in at work. I haven't been to a gas station in months.

Yeah, that's great.

My personal car. That is, I think, the advantage right now.

That is, that is where they're beneficial. Plugging in at home, go to work and come back.

What does it cost for you to drive across the country? Charging, Craig?

Do you know that was part of my strategy to win? So there were multiple points of winning the show, and one of them was, how much is it going to cost you to charge your car? And you may call me a cheater, but when you buy a new Porsche Taycan, they give you. Was it three years of free charging? It was either three months or it might have been three months of free charging. So it didn't cost me a dime, but it was roughly between 12 and $15 to go on a go up to a full charge.

And you stopped?

Yeah, I'd stop every 200 miles or so. So I didn't really do the math. I didn't have to do the math.

But the cost per mile is still substantially cheaper than gas.

It is, significantly.

So if you're trying to do the math of what it would take a gas car to get across the country as far as to electric, I mean, you're like a fraction, A fraction.

And we did do the math, but it's been a few months. I don't remember what it was.

Yeah, Buddy was showing me the other day. He's got an ex and he lives probably 30 or 40 minutes from his work and he commutes every day in it. And I think in the last 60 days he'd use $71 worth of charging. And I was telling him that our office gas bill this time last year was maybe $1500 and it's now $3500. And I was just like, you know, this is serious money because of these gas, you know what has happened here. And he was like, well, look at this. I was like, yeah, I hate you. Oh well.

Craig, hey, we appreciate your time, man. This is, this has been fun. I think every two years we got to get a catch up with you.

Yeah, this is so much fun. I really enjoy listening to your, your station or your podcast and I keep up on you guys all the time. So thanks for having me back on. If anyone ever had questions like YouTube questions, which is what we originally talked to on the first podcast. YouTube has helped grow my business significantly and obviously I wouldn't expect any other dealer to do what I do the way I do it. But I have found, and if you don't mind me just adding this for people listening, please. I have found just being yourself and kind of relating and connecting to people. Even if you're not, even if you don't like your face on camera, you can speak behind the camera and speak about the car you're showing or whatever. It's free to have a YouTube channel link it to your website and directly reflects your Google views too. So the more people your page views, I mean the more people that watch your YouTube channel based off your website, click. So they go to your website, they watch a video goes to your YouTube channel. YouTube relates that to your Google page views. So it's all connected. It's really worth having if nobody's ever set it up. Even just if you're talking about specifically the car you have for sale and linking that to your website, it's well worth doing very great.

That's a great thing for dealers to hear. YouTube does help sell cars, classic cars. When we sold a bunch of them, we really, really did. Well, I still get calls from a video I made five, six, eight years ago on a car we sold that long ago. So it does work. Craig, thanks for helping independent dealers and we look forward to seeing you soon on YouTube or in person.

Thank you so much for having me. You guys are great. Dealers helping dealers. Please leave us a review and subscribe the independent Dealer podcast.